Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

suggested his mind remained intact, behind the
cracked facade. Glenn Hughes, too, recalls that
despite all the drugs on display, David was ‘running
the show. I was blown away by that. My mind would
be all over the place when I was doing drugs, but he
had total command of the sound – and this
understanding of the musicians, it was like watching
the greatest football manager in action.’
There were other crucial, perhaps surprising,
influences. Carlos Alomar had been back working in
New York when he got the call. His lifestyle was
essentially wholesome and straight during the
recording. Told that the keyword was
‘experimentation’ with no time limits, one of his key
motivations on the self-consciously epic title track
was his session-man’s knowledge that ‘If a song is
over three minutes you make double the royalty –
Glory Glory!’ As he and the rhythm section
experimented with the opening section of ‘Station to
Station’, messing around and adding muso tricks (‘I
was listening to Jethro Tull at the time,’ says
Alomar), Bowie instantly seized on a disquieting
turnaround in the rhythm, with a bar of 3/4 and then
5/4 to disorientate the listener, a prog-rock
technique which rendered the introduction jarring
and disturbing, preparing the listener for lyrics which
are similarly grandiose – but sinister.
The song’s mention of ‘White Stains’ invokes one
of Crowley’s most obscure works, a collection of
pornographic poems he’d written under the
pseudonym George Archibald Bishop. ‘One magical
movement, from Kether to Malkuth’ is a reference to